So I do the only thing I can.
I stay away, and I make sure, with every word and touch from Dominic to Georgiana, Elle knows I’m doing it because I love her.
She goes on a fucking date with Thor. I know this because Mara has a bunch of paps trail them, and they get photos of the both of them in a cutesy little French restaurant in NorthLondon. And leaving, his arm around her, her laughing up at him.
It makes me so fuckingmad. But there’s nothing I can do, except leave her alone, and go to meetings. Because I’ll lose my mind without them, and I owe it to Elle and to Alyssa not to fall off the wagon.
Even though this is the ultimate test for me. God knows, I wanna stop feeling. I want that chemical high, the fan-fucking-tastic rush through my bloodstream. I want the euphoria. The oblivion. The supreme well-being. Because I sure as hell can’t get it from my love life right now.
The craving drags itself over my nerve endings. Creeps along my skin. Makes my muscles fizz. And ache. And jump. But I won’t give into it.
Ichoosenot to give into it, because I choose not to be the guy everyone thinks I am.
Instead, I work. I work out. I swim. I drink crazy amounts of Pellegrino.
And I go round and round in my head with this impossible, unsolvable puzzle.
I fucked up once, and from the time I walked away, I wasted years of my life. Booze. Drugs. Women. Shitty projects.
Then I got another chance, and while I’ll never, ever be worthy of her, I’ve spent the past few months doing the work. Getting clean. Getting myself to a state where I can be strong enough for her. Where I’m not an embarrassment to her.
And now, the only way I can support her in her career, and allow her to scale the heights she’s capable of, is to be nothing to her.
Well fuck that.
I have nothing to lose. Sure, my career is on the up again, thanks to Alyssa and Azure taking a chance on me, but if I can’t have Elle, I don’t care about my career, anyways.
I laid myself bare to her.
No excuses.
No trying to skirt around the truth or rewrite history (well, after that disastrous moment where I said I wouldn’t let her ‘slip away’ again. Fuck’s sake).
Just the God’s honest truth about how pathetic I was. How I let Mom persuade me I was worthless. How I managed to do the very opposite of what I intended to do to Elle: throw her under a bus.
It worked with her. Maybe it worked because she could smell the lack of bullshit. Or maybe it was because she could see I was on my knees, willing to be vulnerable. Or at least, less scared of being vulnerable with her than I was of what I’d be sabotaging if I wasn’t.
If she’s been willing to listen to my truth and judge me on the man I am today, with all the risk that entails for her, then maybe the public will be too.
It’s worth a shot.
I message Mike and ask him to hook me up with Gordon Kay.
I don’t tellElle till the morning of the day I’m due to shoot the show.
Gordon bit my hand off. Who wouldn’t? A no-holes-barred, one-on-one, ask-me-anything interview with a long-time Hollywood actor who’s provided fodder so colourful over the past twenty years, everyone’s lost any perspective on what’s real and what’s not.
Oh yeah, and we’re doing it live, and Kay will be taking questions via Twitter. Because I have no more fucks left to give.
I break the news to her when we’re standing by the set in costume, chugging from our water bottles before we have to hand them back to Parka Pete and take our marks.
‘Are you actually insane?’ Her free hand flies to her hip. ‘It’s like handing yourself over to a hungry wolf. He’ll tear you apart.’
I shrug. ‘I don’t care, baby. All I care about is you and the fact that the whole fucking world has decided I’m not good enough for you. I’ve wiped the slate clean with you, and we still can’t be together. The only way forward for me, for us, is to wipe the slate clean with everyone else and hope that, at some point, they stop seeing me as a predator who had some evil plan and start seeing me as a regular dude who fucked up and may be remotely deserving of a second chance.’
‘I don’t like it.’ She stares at me. ‘I mean, taking questions live from Twitter! It’s a disaster waiting to happen. God only knows what sorts of things people will ask.’
‘I’m sure his producers will only let the more family-friendly tweets through.’
